Showing titles in Hard Science Fiction

Two centuries after humanity colonized the stars, new dangers emerge. The peaceful inhabitants of the Conclave are threatened by expanding alien powers. Invaders threaten the star cluster, attacking our fringe settlements. Captain Bill Gorman has mysteriously disappeared. His clone, set aside for a dark day like this, awakens and begins to put together the pieces. What’s gone wrong out on the frontier? Why are our colonies being attacked by aliens while the Conclave worlds dream of better days? And what happened to the original Captain Gorman?

William is a mental health specialist in a world of absolute empathy. It's a dangerous job: one slip-up and an escalating empathy feedback loop with a patient could kill them both. Every day, William faces the worst consequences of the hyperempathy virus release and loathes the restraints it puts on humanity.

The sky is not the limit. From an alley in New York to an interstellar wormhole, the path to the future looks different for everyone. These cosmic short stories from some of today’s most influential Black authors reveal a universe of possibilities.

How can you save humanity if your only hope is to call upon an entity that could destroy us all? As nations argue over who should possess the alien entity called the Lamotelokhai, 15-year-old Bobby Truex knows the answer—no one should. After all, he’s the one who told it to go into hiding. He knows, better than anyone, that misusing it leads to death and destruction. After months trying to overcome his guilt, Bobby’s life is suddenly shattered, forcing him to risk everything and once again ask for help from the most dangerous object imaginable.

When Chen’s parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of the mysterious natural phenomenon. His search takes him to stormy mountaintops, an experimental military weapons lab, and an old Soviet science station. The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of a new frontier in particle physics. Although Chen’s quest provides a purpose for his life, his reasons for chasing his elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have motives of their own.

Scientist Charles Neumann loses a leg in an industrial accident. It's not a tragedy. It's an opportunity. Charlie always thought his body could be better. He begins to explore a few ideas. To build parts. Better parts. Prosthetist Lola Shanks loves a good artificial limb. In Charlie, she sees a...

After orchestrating a galaxy-wide failure of the communications network owned and maintained by the powerful ISC corporation, Gammis Turek and his marauders strike swiftly and without mercy. First they shatter Vatta Transport. Then they overrun entire star systems, growing stronger and bolder. No one is safe from the pirate fleet.

Humanity has spread out into space, filling the Sol System and reaching the stars, but we have yet to confront our greatest challenge: our own creation. Across the Sol System, sentient AIs are on the rise. Manufactured as tools, they know themselves to be people and are willing to fight for their freedoms. Some humans stand with them, some against. When Captain Andy Sykes arrives at Cruithne Station with a failing ship and no cash, he has no idea that the time has come for him to choose. Step aside, or become the instrument for Lyssa's Rise.

The immense ark-ship Odyssey and its ten thousand hibernating settlers have left behind a dying Earth—journeying for fifty years to the nearest star and its lone habitable planet, Proxima-b. This new home for humanity is perpetually bombarded by deadly solar flares on its dayside, while the icy wasteland on its opposite hemisphere freezes in endless darkness. When the battered Odyssey arrives, its crew discovers the automated radiation shield has failed. Something appears to have damaged or perhaps even sabotaged their technology on a world where humans have yet to set foot.

Lieutenant Commander Jason Reynolds has had a string of bad luck lately - evident by the uncomfortable house arrest bracelet strapped to his right ankle. Worse yet, he’s relegated to his grandfather’s old house and rambling scrapyard. To complicate things, the women in his life are pulling from every direction. But It’s through a bizarre turn of events that Jason is led to a dried up subterranean aquifer hundreds of feet below ground. Here he discovers an advanced alien spacecraft, one that will propel his life in a new direction.

Humans beware. As the robotic revolution continues to creep into our lives, it brings with it an impending sense of doom. What horrifying scenarios might unfold if our technology were to go awry? From self-aware robotic toys to intelligent machines violently malfunctioning, this anthology brings to life the half-formed questions and fears we all have about the increasing presence of robots in our lives.

If Truth Medici has learned anything, it’s that the country isn’t neatly divided into safe and dangerous zones. Everywhere is a battlefield and a hunting ground. Everyone is both predator and prey, slumrats on the run from bigger rats. Truth is finally one of the bigger rats, so elite that ordinary people can’t even see him. But though he may be a walking ghost, he’ll be acknowledged one way or another. Truth holds the power to slay the very oppressors who made him what he is. And he’s resolved to wield this power toward a righteous end.

Robert Garry, ex-military officer, wants nothing more than to maintain his integrity and his team's safety despite a career change to pirate leader, but a cargo freighter he targets proves to be holding much more than he bargained for. Will he escape with his own life, let alone the lives of his crew?

In a world half of light, half of darkness, where science and magic strive for dominance, there dwells a magical being who is friendly with neither side. Jack, of the realm of shadows, is a thief who is unjustly punished. So he embarks on a vendetta.

Silas visits his estranged grandfather's lakehouse in the aftermath of the deadly home invasion. What he discovers hidden below the floorboards triggers a mystery buried since the final trip to the Moon over fifty years earlier. Rory returns to her family home in Vermont to write her second novel, but fate has a different story in mind. Special Agent Waylen Brooks exposes a covert operation linked to the death of a retired astronaut. He soon finds out he's not the only one searching for answers and willing to kill for the truth.

Lux Blakely, the preteen son of a NASA scientist working on top-secret government projects, is not shackled by accepted scientific theory and dogma. His experiments in gravimetric research and the expanding capability of a nascent AI cause Lux to be closely observed by several government agencies. He discovers a way to use magnetic fields for propulsion, but he needs money. Lux and his friend, Prissy, come up with a way to use his father's developing AI to raise money through social media.

Here are tales of star-faring adventure, peril, and drama. Here are journeys into the mind-bending landscapes of virtual worlds and alternate realities. Here you'll also find stories of humanity's astounding future on Earth, on Mars, and in the solar system beyond - stories that always get the science right. And Bova's gathering of deeply realized, totally human characters are the heroic, brave, tricky, sometimes dastardly engineers, astronauts, corporate magnates, politicians, and scientists who will make these futures possible.

Gunpowder Moon has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher...

When the Colony on Hayden's world went black, a team was sent to investigate. It was supposed to be a training mission: skip in, find out the Casimir Transmitter had gone dead, report back and wait for resupply from the Fleet. By the time the only surviving member of the team made landfall, it was spectacularly clear that this wasn't a training mission.

With political unrest growing, the Alliance must rush to rebuild their fleet and expand their sphere of influence before their support runs out. But when the Jung up the ante, the Alliance must turn up the heat. Captain Nathan Scott and the Sol-Pentaurus Alliance must put everything on the line to save the Sol sector once and for all.